Pornography Is Making Many Young, Healthy Men Unable to Have Sex With Their Wives Without a Little Blue Pill

November 8, 2018

At first glance, Sebastien Smith looks like a young man in the prime of life. The 29-year-old goes to the gym most days, has never had a health problem and — thanks to his athletic physique — is popular with female acquaintances.

He is a long way from the image of a typical Viagra user: greying older men rendered impotent by weight gain and heart problems.

Yet in fact, Sebastien is one of a growing number of healthy men in their teens and 20s using the drug recreationally, to meet their own high expectations — and those of the women they meet.

As this investigation uncovered, an unwholesome combination of a dating scene based on casual encounters, and expectations of impossible stamina got from pornography, have left these chaps convinced they need pharmaceutical help just to be ‘good enough’.

Sebastien, from Newcastle, says: ‘I always keep a Viagra tablet in my wallet just in case. I started taking it six years ago — all my friends do, too.

‘If I drink too much on an evening out, it means I can still perform, however much I’ve had. It gives me confidence.’

Sebastien admits he first viewed pornography at the age of 15, and it’s perhaps no surprise this has coloured his idea of what intimacy should be.

‘Sex is a performance,’ he says in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘You feel like you’re being reviewed by women. They expect a lot, and you don’t want them to talk about you negatively afterwards.

‘I’ll always take Viagra because I’d always rather have the security of knowing that the girl I am sleeping with was satisfied at the end of the night.’

You may well ask if popping a pill is really the best way to a woman’s heart — but there’s no doubt Viagra — active ingredient Sildenafil citrate — has had an enormous impact on sex lives since its creation 20 years ago.

It works by widening the blood vessels to improve blood flow on arousal, and is extremely effective in treating forms of erectile dysfunction, typically suffered by men aged 50 and over.

Until recently, it was only given by doctors to men with a genuine medical erectile problem — so Sebastien used to buy his supply from online pharmacies, which have come under fire for failing to perform the necessary checks before dishing out prescriptions.

But this spring, Britain became the first country in the world to allow Viagra to be sold without a prescription, meaning he can buy it at Boots along with toothpaste and razors.

The decision was taken by the Government’s drugs watchdog, the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), partly to counteract the flood of potentially dangerous fake pills on the market. Sildenafil is now the most counterfeited drug in the world.